


Melbourne Boy

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Descriptions of wounds, F/M, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 08:12:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13383765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: Only two things had ever managed to shut Phryne Fisher up, and she was in many ways hard pushed to say which had been worse.The first was Janey, and more precisely the day that she disappeared. It was as though a limb had been cut off, and Phryne still remembers the pain of it, the shock of her sister not being at her side.The second is here and now, in a hospital in the blood soaked fields of France.





	Melbourne Boy

**Author's Note:**

> My first Miss Fisher fanfiction! Based on a dream I had, kind of.

Only two things had ever managed to shut Phryne Fisher up, and she was in many ways hard pushed to say which had been worse.

The first was Janey, and more precisely the day that she disappeared. It was as though a limb had been cut off, and Phryne still remembers the pain of it, the shock of her sister not being at her side.

The second is here and now, in a hospital in the blood soaked fields of France. 

It isn’t her first day, not the very first, but this morning she held the hand of a boy as he died in front of her. He isn’t the first to do that either, but he was the first to come in alive when he should have been dead. His insides were blown away and still he went on living. He went on living and he was so brave. He didn’t scream for his mother and he didn’t cry. He only held Phyrne’s hand so hard he left nail marks on her skin, and he whimpered. Phryne thinks that she will hear that whimper, the sound of life draining from him as though it were a torture, for as long as she lives.

And now she is sat, with her hands clenched around a mug of tea and she can’t speak, any more than she could fly to the moon. The sister saw it, thankfully and that is why Phryne is here when she should be working. It is a kindness she has not earned, a chance to sit down when no one else is allowed, but she is grateful for it. Too grateful. She might not be able to speak, but it is only her hard earned grip on herself that is stopping her from breaking down in tears.

***

She gets over it, pulls herself together. She’s always been good at that, pretending. Pretending she isn’t bothered, pretending she is ready for something when she isn’t. Mother always says that what’s a woman’s life is, pretending. It’s the only thing she’s ever said that Phryne has taken on board. Smile on, emotions pushed down, time to step out.

So she does, steps back into the chaos, and the sister nods at her. Well done. Time to pretend, like the rest of us. Phryne goes to her side, and is handed the needle being used to sew up the face of a man who is bleeding onto the floor. 

Pretend. Deep breath, pretend.

She bends to her work.

***

Phryne is at that hospital for a month or two, before she is moved to another, further from the frontline. She does not take it as an indication of her talents. She will go where she is needed. Her thick skin is good for the frontline, but her stubborn nature suits the other hospital, suits the battles that come every day from men who are recovering, men who are racked by trauma and the sheer guilt of living when all their mates died. 

They are the ones who really need looking after. They are the ones who need to be rebuilt into something that resembles who they once were, and they fight it every damn step of the way. 

Phryne Fisher has always been good for a fight.

So she fights.

She fight and she cajoles and she bullies and wheedles, and she is good at it. All manner of broken men appear before her and she fixes them, or tries to anyway. 

Sometimes, all she can do is try.

***

“Come along, lieutenant,” Phryne says, hailing the man to his feet, “If you don’t walk now, you never will.”

“Leave me alone, woman!”

“If you don’t get up right now, nothing that’s happened to you or any of your boys will mean anything!”

The lieutenant, a Canadian, is tall and broad shouldered, but he withers under her gaze. He is hurt, badly so, but she has seen men more injured than he walk out of the door. His heart is the problem; it isn’t in it, and she can hardly blame him for that. 

“I can’t,” he says, “I can’t.”

“You can,” she says, her voice gentle, “I am here, with you.”

He takes a deep breath and she puts his arm around her shoulders, her own around his waist. They are unsteady for the first step, then better for the next, then they have walked ten steps. Ten steps more than he thought he could manage.

“You’re a tough one and no mistake,” he says, as she deposits him back in his bed. 

“Don’t forget it.”

***

And a year goes by.

She has never stuck at anything this long, never given a part of herself so selflessly. She wonders if anyone is proud of her. Mother is still undoubtedly scandalised by it all. But Janey would be proud, if she lived. Then again, Phryne muses, if it weren’t for Janey, she wouldn’t have come here at all. 

The least she can do, for her sister, is make sure other families get their dear ones back.

***

And then she meets him. 

***

He comes in unconscious, a bandage wrapped around his head, covering his ears. 

His mates are chatty, or at least some of them are, and Phryne is pleased to hear voices from home.

“And what exactly are you lot doing here?” she asks, and faces light up.

“A girl from home!” one man says, and he is so cheerful you’d hardly know he is missing both his legs, “Are you a sight for sore eyes!”

“Don’t think I’ll be any nicer to you for it,” Phryne says, helping to shift the unconscious man onto a bed, “I want you all out of here and on the way home as soon as I can kick your arses out that door.”

The men crow and she brushes the hair back from the forehead of the man beneath her hands. It’s good to hear the sounds of home, out here in this godforsaken hell.

***

His name, she discovers, is Jack Robinson.

His mates can’t praise him enough for his heroics, the way he carried a lad on his back through a shower of bullets and got him back into the trench. After that, they don’t remember what happened, but it must have been a shell to send them all flying like that. Jack hasn’t woken up since.

Phryne nods and lets them talk. They need it, she’s realised. Need to talk. The trouble comes when they don’t.

After a week, three of them are shipped out. A week after that, the next two are gone and only Jack Robinson remains. They don’t want to move him. He’s not strong enough to travel. He’ll have to stay. 

And Phryne is drawn to him. He’s got a nice face, beneath the bandage and the wounds, the cuts and the scrapes, but he’s more than that. He’s a Melbourne boy and she’s a Melbourne girl, and they’re out here together on the other side of the world.

***

Then he wakes up.

***

Screaming. 

Someone is screaming. 

Phryne is working through the nights, and she gets there first. 

It is, almost unbelievable after all this time, her Melbourne boy. 

Jack Robinson is awake, and he is screaming.

She grips his hand and tries to talk to him, to make him look her in the eye. He stops screaming, thankfully, but his grip is tight and he looks at her as though he’s never heard a word of English in his life. His brown eyes plead with her and she doesn’t know what is wrong until he raises his free hand and presses it to his ear.

“I can’t-” he rasps, voice broken from his long silence, “I can’t hear you.”

***

_You are safe,_ she writes.

_Do not worry. You are safe._

He reads the page of her notebook, eyes straining, and nods once before he falls back into unconsciousness. 

***

She is there when he wakes, the next time. 

He comes round slowly, and Phryne watches the light play over his face. He blinks, stares at the ceiling. Turns, and stares at her, and she lets him, holds his gaze. Gives him something to cling to.

She wonders if he will recognise her, from before, but doubts it. He stares until there comes a twitch in his face, a flicker in his eyes, and she knows he has realised something is wrong. He raises his hands to his ears and touches the bandage.

“I can’t hear,” he says, “Nurse, I can’t hear.”

Phryne nods and touches his hands gently.

_Yes. I know._

“What – happened?”

So she writes in her notebook, as much as she found out from his mates, and he reads it carefully.

His face is stone, and she cannot read him in return.

***

Now he is awake, he will not be here long. Just another casualty in this pointless war, his life ruined for the sake of a foot of dirt. 

He doesn’t say much to anyone, except for Phryne.

“He’s imprinted on you,” the sister says, “Like a baby bird fresh out of the egg.”

Phryne doesn’t know about that. She does know that the man fascinates her. 

“Will I be like this forever?” he asks her one day, and he’s so stoic she wonders if she imagined him ever waking up screaming.

_I don’t know_ , she writes. _Maybe. Maybe not._

“That’s not the answer I was hoping for,” he says, then smirks. He’s making jokes now, and he’s smirking and God help her, he’s the most handsome man she has ever seen. 

***

The doctor removes Jack’s bandage for good the day before he is supposed to go home. He’s healing well and you’d never know. You’d never know what the war has taken from him. 

“How do I look?” he asks Phryne, and she’s noticed lately that his voice is quieter when he talks, and she dares to hope for him. 

“Ravishingly dashing!” she says, and knows he has read her lips when he smirks at her.

***

She walks him to the ambulance and there, before he climbs up, he squeezes her hand. Glances around and kisses her cheek.

“Thank you, Nurse Fisher,” he says, and Phryne feels a burning in her chest.

_If only,_ she thinks.

_If only I hadn’t found him here._


End file.
